Mining and large scale excavating operations may require fleets of machines to transport excavated material, such as ore or overburden, from an area of excavation to a destination. For such an operation to be productive and profitable, the fleet of machines must be efficiently operated. One way to increase the efficiency of a fleet of machines is to reduce the number of operators required to operate the fleet by, for example, using autonomous or semi-autonomous machines.
A method of operating a semi-autonomous machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,277,784 (the '784 patent), issued to Weiss et al. The '784 patent discloses a method of operating a manned harvester and an unmanned transport machine. The unmanned transport machine contains a control unit, connected to a receiving unit that is configured to receive position data from the harvester. The control unit operates the transport machine based on the position data from the harvester and, for example, drives the transport machine parallel to the harvester.
Although the method of operating a semi-autonomous machine of the '784 patent may increase the efficiency of a fleet by reducing the number of required operators, the method may not be appropriate for operating a multimachine caravan in an excavating operation. In particular, the method may be incapable of increasing the following machine's engine power when, for example, traversing a grade. Furthermore, the method of communicating position data from a lead machine to the following machine may be impractical for use with multiple unmanned machines following a manned machine in series, for example, with a multimachine caravan traveling along a haul road.
The present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the shortcomings set forth above.